CircleIn brings value to students because they can have synergy together. Studying and learning alone is the hardest part of a course if a student doesn’t get the baseline knowledge. The best way to learn is to practice and talk about it and the CircleIn Community provides a low stress environment with a high return, to do exactly that, and students don’t even have to pay for it.

Sometimes students are afraid to talk to us as professors, or have a difficult time with the coordination it requires. Students also get stressed out and can feel isolated. The CircleIn Community makes them feel like they are part of a community of classmates.

In the first 10 minutes of my classes, I discuss action items and I remind them that my class is difficult and to go to the CircleIn community with their classmates. The larger the class, the easier it is for students to hide and not feel like they are part of the program and the more important it is for collaboration and doing so in the low stress environment on CircleIn.

I’d recommend the following scenarios for professors to remind students to use the CircleIn Community,, you’ll notice it's around any stressful events..

• The start of classes
• Upcoming exams
• Talking about papers
• Upcoming labs
• Assignments coming due

Again I’m very mindful that my class and school is stressful. I tell my students all the time, “One of the ways to reduce stress is to collaborate with each other, and that’s why you should be in the CircleIn Community. Collaboration is how you succeed in a class,  and how you take care of yourself, when it's stressful.”

I share with students, “The CircleIn Community is a low stress collaborative community, with lots of fun benefits.”

If you have TAs or SIs, involve them in getting students to join the CircleIn Community. It should be an expectation you set for students to join the CircleIn Community and we saw an overall decrease of the D/F/W rate thru the semester of almost 33%, due in large part, I believe, to the collaborative environment that the CircleIn course inclusion stresses.